I'm going to have to disagree. I feel like this game is getting a lot of points just because it's SMT, when the flaws might be attacked if it was any other series.
- I found Nocturne's atmosphere almost universally better, save in "those two" parts of IV. SJ and DDS's are better too, and I don't even like DDS.
- The battle system and experience given are unbalanced. I don't know about you, but during a certain part I ended up 20 levels underleveled, despite steamrolling everything in the previous dungeon. In the next area, the average enemy level went down by 5-10 and it was almost too easy again, but the extra EXP from before ended up making me overleveled. Then, at the end of the area, they throw the hardest boss in the game at me. It was just really strange. And this isn't a case of where I might have gone exploring or to an area I shouldn't have been at, this was a series of unavoidable story events.
- Fiend spawn requirements. Enough said.
- I know it's been said before, but I have to echo it. This game is not clear when it comes to directions. Which is fine in and of itself, I enjoy some exploration, but the way the game presented it was as if they expected you to know where to go. There were at least 3-4 times I thought to myself "it's like this game expects me to know Tokyo's layout."
And finally, now that I'm 90+, I'm encountering an entirely new problem:
The money-making system is abysmal. Utterly, horrible. If I want to Fuse Demons I have to run around pointlessly for 30 minutes just so I can wait for Relic respawn times because Fundraiser+ isn't giving me anywhere near the amount I need for the Compendium prices, and that's with the 50% discount App. Not to mention the 400,000 Macca armor piece armors that I haven't even started on. However, it works fine during the main game and, were I reviewing it, I wouldn't knock points for this in particular.
I actually appreciate that a lot of the story is told by NPCs. For example:
If you go back to Infernal Tokyo, there's a Demonoid and a boy in Kasumigaeski. The boy is apparently the spawn of a
Neurisher and the Demonoid, yet the Demonoid is willing to protect and raise it. They've essentially created a new race of
humans that can survive into the future. But you'd never catch this unless you go very far out of your way to an optional area
that it's not even clear you can return to and talk to a specific NPC (it's hinted at in another NPC there, though).
Infernal Tokyo has a host of these type things. It really sheds new, more positive, light on the future of Chaos path
that the main game didn't do a good job of.
That said, while I'm negative here, I'd still agree that RPGamer might be a bit harsh. I'd personally put it at 4.25/5 or so.
There was nothing that made me more giddy than fighting the Four Riders of the Apocalypse at once. I was actually giggling when the battle started.
